Poem by Andrew Barton Paterson

Song of the Wheat

We have sung the song of the droving days, 
Of the march of the travelling sheep; 
By silent stages and lonely ways 
Thin, white battalions creep. 
But the man who now by the land would thrive 
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat. 
Is there ever a man in the world alive 
To sing the song of the Wheat! 
It’s west by south of the Great Divide 
The grim grey plains run out, 
Where the old flock-masters lived and died 
In a ceaseless fight with drought. 
Weary with waiting and hope deferred 
They were ready to own defeat, 
Till at last they heard the master-word— 
And the master-word was Wheat. 

Yarran and Myall and Box and Pine— 
’Twas axe and fire for all; 
They scarce could tarry to blaze the line 
Or wait for the trees to fall, 
Ere the team was yoked, and the gates flung wide, 
And the dust of the horses’ feet 
Rose up like a pillar of smoke to guide 
The wonderful march of Wheat. 

Furrow by furrow, and fold by fold, 
The soil is turned on the plain; 
Better than silver and better than gold 
Is the surface-mine of the grain; 
Better than cattle and better than sheep 
In the fight with drought and heat; 
For a streak of stubbornness, wide and deep, 
Lies hid in a grain of Wheat. 

When the stock is swept by the hand of fate, 
Deep down in his bed of clay 
The brave brown Wheat will lie and wait 
For the resurrection day: 
Lie hid while the whole world thinks him dead; 
But the Spring-rain, soft and sweet, 
Will over the steaming paddocks spread 
The first green flush of the Wheat. 

Green and amber and gold it grows 
When the sun sinks late in the West; 
And the breeze sweeps over the rippling rows 
Where the quail and the skylark nest. 
Mountain or river or shining star, 
There’s never a sight can beat— 
Away to the sky-line stretching far— 
A sea of the ripening Wheat. 

When the burning harvest sun sinks low, 
And the shadows stretch on the plain, 
The roaring strippers come and go 
Like ships on a sea of grain; 
Till the lurching, groaning waggons bear 
Their tale of the load complete. 
Of the world’s great work he has done his share 
Who has gathered a crop of wheat. 

Princes and Potentates and Czars, 
They travel in regal state, 
But old King Wheat has a thousand cars 
For his trip to the water-gate; 
And his thousand steamships breast the tide 
And plough thro’ the wind and sleet 
To the lands where the teeming millions bide 
That say: “Thank God for Wheat!”

1. A Grain of Desert Sand
2. That Half-Crown Sweep
3. Under the Shadow of Kiley’s Hill
4. The Road to Old Man’s Town
5. The Rum Parade

Print

1133 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version